10 hours ago
Bubala restaurant review: ‘The carrots nearly made me take a Covid test'
My wedding reception was held upstairs at the Ivy. Back then, there was only one Ivy: our favourite spot in London, where — in the pre-soft-play days, when our disposable income wasn't funnelled directly into Bluey Inc — we'd had our favourite, joyous, boozy dinners. It was the only possible venue. But now, with an Ivy on every high street, it's like announcing we got married at a Zizzi.
And here, with slight regret, I present another cautionary tale of overexpansion.
I love Bubala. It opened in Spitalfields in 2019, offering a vibrant take on Middle Eastern food that was delicious, quietly vegetarian and deeply hip — not that I'm in any position to judge hipness, but various beard-oil users have assured me that it was. Its firstborn arrived in Soho a few years later, and this sequel proved even better. It was The Godfather Part II, Thor: Ragnarok, Miley Cyrus.
Bubala 3 is a 15-minute trek from King's Cross station, located in the sprawling techtropolis, presumably to vary the lunch options for Google and Facebook employees. The walk gave me plenty of time to hype up the food to my husband, J. By the end of my pitch, he was practically jogging there.
We were welcomed in by a brilliant Kiwi manager, but it's not quite the restaurant I know — it's cool and airy rather than cosy, all concrete, exposed plaster and towering arched windows. It would be hard to say the place had much personality, as if it's ready to be turned into a Wagamama or Côte at a moment's notice.
Inside Bubala
REBECCA HOPE
You have the option of a £33 per person mezze sharing menu or choosing, as we did, from the twenty or so à la carte dishes. We picked about half of them.
The falafels were 10/10. Just the right amount of give on the outside and fluff on the inside, all served on a tahini so white, smooth and creamy it should have an SPF number. Bread and hummus were also spot-on.
The laffa, a scorched flatbread threatening to become a naan, tore with a sublime stretchiness and was the perfect mode of transport to shovel in the glossy hummus, pimped up with nutty burnt butter. 'See?' I said to J.
But, alas, man cannot live on chickpeas alone. Charred halloumi was squidgy and succulent, the antithesis of the squeaky vulcanised rubber found at every barbecue. In Soho, it comes topped with a phenomenal chamomile honey. Here it's been punished with half a jar of marmalade. Sickly and dissonant, it tasted as though a label had been misread — even Paddington would have scraped off the stuff.
The spanakopita looked fantastic — a chimera of the Greek staple with Turkish borek pastry — but was polystyrene dry; the fist of sesame-miso chutney on the side delicious but ultimately unable to perform CPR on its neighbour.
Leeks came doused in a Mexican-themed gratinated béchamel of jalapeños and sheep's cheese, with a tangy amba (mango pickle, to save you a google) reminding us we've got one foot in the Middle East. But the leeks were unforgivably tough. The thoughtfully provided utility knife wasn't up to the job — I think I'd have needed a power tool.
I will forgive them for calling hash brown cubes 'latkes', but I can't forgive them for the potato being grey. The carrot main was so underflavoured it could have been a side for a Sunday roast — I almost took a Covid test. The button mushrooms on the pickle plate were overly soft, slightly redolent of a Travelodge breakfast. The basbousa dessert, a warm semolina cake with pineapple and coconut, had intricate flavours but was stone cold in the middle. Unforced error after unforced error that made me keep apologising to J.
Carrots, feta and apricot
Maybe these were all teething problems — the restaurant has only been open a month. ('Ask your server about our daily wine specials!' screamed a box on the menu. I asked a server, who asked another server, who told us there were no wine specials.) Maybe we caught them on an off day. Or maybe this is a moment for Bubala to take a beat, hopefully before branches start to take hold across the country like knotweed. Or Ivy.
★★★☆☆
1 Cadence Court, Lewis Cubitt Park, London N1;
Charlotte Ivers is away
